Intelligent construction benefits the public: Evidence from the opinion analysis on social media

Purpose – The construction and real estate sectors are vital to national economies, but traditional construction methods often lead to challenges such as safety risks, noise and environmental pollution. While intelligent construction is believed to mitigate these issues, there is a lack of solid empirical evidence on whether it truly benefits the general public. This paper seeks to explore the societal benefits of intelligent construction from the public's perspective, addressing this research gap. Design/methodology/approach – The research adopts a two-step approach. First, topic mining is conducted to identify topics closely related to the public's daily life, such as environmental impact, construction traffic management and construction technologies. These topics are then analyzed through sentiment analysis using a bidirectional long short-term memory model with attention mechanism to determine whether the public has a favorable view of these aspects of intelligent construction, indirectly demonstrating the benefits to the public. Findings – The primary topics identified include "industry development, " "technology enterprise, " "construction equipment, " "intelligent technology, " "environmental protection, " "robots" and "construction traffic management." Sentiment analysis shows that public sentiment is overwhelmingly positive across all topics and regions, with "environmental protection, " "construction traffic management" and "robots" receiving the most favorable reactions. Originality/value – This study provides empirical evidence of the societal benefits of intelligent construction from the public's viewpoint using social media data. The results highlight the need for continued promotion and adoption of intelligent construction due to its positive impact on society.